By BASHIR ADEFAKA
“We formed a welcome line, as we usually do. And as the President shook each person, he had one wisecrack or the other to say. When he got to me, he took my hand and said: “Adesina, this is the best I’ve seen you dressed.” We both laughed heartily, and the television cameras captured it. I remember that many people asked me later what had tickled me and the President, that we laughed so uproariously. Jubril from Sudan? Would he know my name as Adesina? Would he know I rarely wear Agbada? How ridiculous can some people be?”
It never ever occurred to me that I needed to ask Mr. Femi Adesina or discuss with him the ‘Jubril from Sudan’ talk in town that broke out upon the return from months of sick leave abroad of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2017. Not even during any of our many interview meetings or ordinary visits I paid to him inside the rock of power, called the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in Abuja.
I had also had opportunities to meet Mallam Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, and the Digital and Social Media Aide to the President, Lauretta Onochie, just like I did with other top government functionaries mainly also Ministers and top security chiefs including the Director General, National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Alhaji Ahmed Rufa’i Abubakr, that tall, fantastic security chief as easy going but steady as his boss, the President. It never crossed my mind to ask or talk about it.
What for? I knew from day one it was a farce that could only come from the worst agents in the pit of hell. That explains why, even in any of my journalism activities, it never cropped up. When did investigative journalists began to have time for investigation of inexistence? Sadly however, we saw it dedicated more attention as other media gave it hypes. Else, it was just a mere drama acted for some wailing individuals to entertain themselves and so they had their days at it. But to what and whose benefit other than ridicule of themselves and the camp they chose to belong in the community system of Nigeria?
We found out from which source, and whom did we find? Leader of first terrorist organisation to ever be declared by competent court of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, and a man who should have earned self respect by being patriotic as former Minister of Aviation of the country, Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode. Ekiti State Governor at the time, Mr. Ayodele Fayose was providing them liver as a sitting governor of the Republic using resources of Nigeria to either fund or support the elements in Kanu and Fani-Kayode, who publicly and respectively called Nigeria a Zoo and did things to collapse the country.
Remember how Femi Fani-Kayode abused Islam, Muslims and called out the ancestral leadership of Northern Nigeria to show his passionate hate for the Fulani olicharchy. Could it have been because he so much hated Papa Uthman Dan Fodio, the excellent Reformer? Fani-Kayode simply hates Islam and North. Then he is enemy of Nigeria because, for doing that, he has always worked with elements who wanted President Buhari dead. Reason he had sworn he would not return from sick leave in London and when he eventually returned, it was easier for him to join Nnamdi Kanu in formulating the Fake News about ‘Jubril from Sudan’.
More saddening, those who took the falsehood and treated it officially as truth were and still are supposedly educated fellows. They are journalists, lawyers and human rights activist members of certain civil societies. Since that 2017, from one coalition camp to the group that later played a twist with Donald Trump to turn a Visa ban over corruption in America to the game of back-end server, which turned a dark cloud over the post-2019 Nigeria, most Nigerians have never remained the same normal. They now see truth from different angles. They see truth as meaning different things to different people whereas truth is constant and has no other name but truth.
It was the main reason somebody would sit down at the corner of his room and make the wrong use of the social media to send lies such as ‘Jubril from Sudan’ in Aso Rock and they would believe it. President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, noted their evil and so he ccom ended Mr. Femi Adesina: “Thank you for holding fast against mischief makers while I was away”. Yes, Oga Adesina, Mallam Garba Shehu and Lauretta Onochie are commended and ate commendable. It has never been this worse of hate towards an administration and leadership in Nigeria’s democratic Presidency. But it is understandably so because, Buhari is first political leader since 1999, who has insisted that campaign promises he made must be seen to be fulfilled and that he will not partake in their corruption. Surely, corruption will fight back. Funny, Prof. Chukwuma Charles Soludo, who was part of them, is now economic adviser on board to the President. Are these mischievous haters asleep that they aren’t asking him how far?
However, I jumped at the discussion seeing Mr. Femi Adesina eventually say it loud Wednesday when, celebrating the 78th Birthday of the President afer three years the Presidency has watched purveyors of the falsehood about his personality status ridiculous act their drama.
Oga Femi Adesina is always a fantastic thinker and writer. Choosing the 78th birthday anniversary of an enigma in Africa’s most powerful and most respected President for this response that took three years to mature is apt and it finally dealt them a big blow.
That was when in an article titled, “Buhari at 78: If only we knew this President”, Mr. Femi Adesina, the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, asked, “Jubril from Sudan? Would he know my name as Adesina? Would he know I rarely wear Agbada? How ridiculous can some people be?”
According to the article, which had earlier been published in a whole by The DEFENDER, Mr. Adesina, an Igbo chief and former Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of Sun Newspapers Limited, pitied some supposedly educated Nigerians, who would go to any level rubbishing their own integrity by believing anything for whatever reason.
During the #ENDSARS protests in October this year, the same Nnamdi Kanu-formulated falsehood about ‘Jubril from Sudan’ in Aso Rock resurfaced when, even, some Yoruba, who do not understand how security operate and had wanted President Buhari to come out and talk first before thinking, now belief DJ Switch stories of Lekki Toll Gate massacre without death and so are asking: “Are you sure Buhari is still alive? It is now we believe the Jubril from Sudan is the man we have in Aso Rock”. Many if them said to me in Lagos until they went through shame and can’t any longer talk again.
President Buhari’s only offence against me is not listening to our cries and pleas to right the wrong further done to those that Peoples Democratic Party under Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan left in the cold while pardoning the main culprit of Diya coup, who is General Oladipo Diya himself, and left General Tajudeen Olanrewaju (Rtd) out of the presidential pardon. That is a disfavour that pains me to my heart, considering all I know that General Olanrewaju deserves a pardon based on the fact that Diya and even Lt. General Ishaiya Bamaiyi never at anywhere indict him and his aide, Lt. Col. Olu Akiyode, who was tortured to death during incarceration and whose family has remained in poverty since then. Even at that, nothing would be enough for me to accept the lies these elements the likes of Nnamdi Kanu and Femi Fani-Kayode are telling and which supposedly knowledgeable are easily taking from them.
Mr. Adesina faulted the claim by the leader of the terrorist IPOB leader, Kanu, that the man in Aso Rock is not President Muhammadu Buhari but ‘Jubril from Sudan’. He did that in the article through which he poured encomium on President Buhari, insisting that Mr President is hale and hearty.
Adesina condemned Kanu’s hypothetical submission, describing his narratives as Idiocy, sadly believed by some intellectuals.
His words: “This is Jubril from Sudan and not Muhammadu Buhari, who had died during the medical vacation in 2017, some people say. You have a clone in Aso Villa, not Buhari. Idiocy, sadly believed by even some intellectuals.
“Let me tell you a story. On the day the President finally returned to the country in August 2017, after months of absence, the Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Abayomi Olonisakin, was giving out his daughter in marriage. I had attended the church service, decked unusually in complete Agbada, with cap to match. From the wedding, I went straight to the airport to join the reception party.
“We formed a welcome line, as we usually do. And as the President shook each person, he had one wisecrack or the other to say. When he got to me, he took my hand and said: “Adesina, this is the best I’ve seen you dressed.” We both laughed heartily, and the television cameras captured it. I remember that many people asked me later what had tickled me and the President, that we laughed so uproariously.
“Jubril from Sudan? Would he know my name as Adesina? Would he know I rarely wear Agbada? How ridiculous can some people be?
“Another story. The journalist Lindsay Barret had been a long time friend of the President. One day, he sent me to give his greetings. When I did, the President said: “Lindsay Barret. I remember meeting him at the war front in 1968. He was covering the war. There was a day he was almost killed in an ambush, and he then described himself as a ‘devout coward,’ who was lucky to be alive.”
“Jubril of Sudan? And he remembers Barret, whom he met at the warfront in 1968? Tell it to the marines.”
This, indeed, is a worthy birthday gift to Me. President and Nigerians who patriotically follow him. And I am one of Nigerians who queue behind him.
